It occurs to me, on a tactical level that others may find cynical, that the appearance of such women at moments of extreme revolutionary danger like this may be almost consciously conceived in order to confound the (male) soldiers of the oppressive regime (in this case Syrian soldiers or Hezbollah). These soldiers may be on the ground, observing, and may be ordered to terminate the demonstration, or demonstrators. But look at the photograph. Place yourself in the shoes of one of those soldiers. How much harder is it to carry out such orders with her in the picture? They may at least hesitate. Be confounded at least for a short time. Even, perhaps, break down and join the demonstrators. This kind of thing almost certainly happened in Berlin when the Wall fell and during the Russian Revolution of 1989. In any event one can only admire the heroism of the men and women. We are so used to the sanitized Western version of this kind of demonstration. But we need to remember the type of autarky these people are demonstrating against. Demonstrating like this in that sort of environment is a deadly serious matter. This young women, like the men (behind her, in this photograph) is placing herself in danger of losing her life.
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3/03/2005

22:06
We can rightfully celebrate not only the increased freedom of women today, but U.S. foreign policy. “Afghanistan has appointed its first female provincial governor in keeping with the new government's policy of promoting women to positions of power”. This is not merely fortuitous. I predict that this will be repeated in Iraq. Compare this event with the ‘democratic’ process in a country that the U.S. hasn’t invaded yet: “Only men are being allowed to take part in the elections. Saudi officials said there was not enough time to establish separate polling places for women. They said they hope women will be allowed to take part in elections scheduled to be held in four years”.

Yet the current weltschmerz against ‘fascist imperial aggression’ is so shrill that feminists would likely reject targeting Islamic countries not only for liberation but also, more troublingly, for approbation.

Several speakers at the [Conference on the Status of Women being held at the United Nations] questioned the idea that violence against women is worse in Islamic societies than in others. Yakin Erturk of Turkey, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women, says [...] ‘attention has turned to Muslim countries as if there's a specificity there which promotes and perpetuates violence against women. I think it is good to demystify this perception, because it is not Islam or Christianity or any other religion but a coalition of conservative forces who speak on behalf of these religions that is [an] obstacle to women's rights’.

This watery tautology, however, serves neither my argument (that such events as Habiba Sarobi's appointment are a direct and predictable result of liberation), nor Erturk’s (that Islamophobia blinds the West to the fact that we have problems of gender inequality of our own). But does Ertuk really mean to say that elections in the U.S., and for that matter in Turkey, share the same features with respect to gender as those in Saudi Arabia? It is hard to sustain such bloviation, and even this U.N. ‘rapporteur’ must acknowledge that “women in many Islamic countries are lagging behind in the quest for equality, partly because Muslim countries tend to be less democratic”, and that, indeed, “across the Muslim world you find less democratic institutions available to allow women to exercise their rights”.

So there is hope for more categorical statements yet. One of the participants at the Conference is Ayesha Imam of Nigeria, who explains that in Muslim societies

there are the major issues of ‘honor’ violence or ‘female genital cutting’ also known as female genital mutilation. In the first case, a woman may be beaten or even killed by members of her own family if she is raped because the violence has dishonored the family. ‘The woman embodies the honor of the family’, says Imam. She says such honor violence may even result if a woman simply talks to a person the family disapproves of. In some cultures, cutting off part of the female genitalia is a common practice and is attributed to Islam.

Yet even Ayesha Imam, who courageously points a finger at such practices, seeks to present a solution not in terms of moral condemnation, but of health issues.

[O]ne way to deal with the issue is to ‘focus not on trying to stigmatize cultures or values of cultures as wrong or evil or immoral, but focusing on practices which harm people in health terms, in dignity terms, in rights terms whilst validating the cultures themselves’.

The message that seems to be coming out of this Conference is that Islamic ‘values’ are never wrong, merely unhealthy, and deserve healing, not condemnation. Why are these women so keen to tiptoe around these issues and not tread on anyone’s toes? Why is it so unpalatable to make a moral judgment?

By contrast, Irshad Manji, whose book I am currently reading, has no problem exploding Islamic mores (and non-Islamic ones too). While I am sure that she would recoil in horror from many of my own opinions, I cannot sing enough praises about her courageous book, since it pierces the walls of Islam with dialog and dissent instead of skirting them. Thomas Friedman today notes that “[y]oung Arabs and Pakistanis are now downloading [her book] in private and discussing it. This week she was approached by a small Arabic publisher who operates in Lebanon and Germany - and has just opened in Baghdad - offering to publish her book in Iraq! ‘I can't help but appreciate the symbolism’, she said. ‘Baghdad was the seat of the Islamic enlightenment from the eighth to 12th centuries. It was a crossroads of goods, services, big ideas’.”

Irshad Manji’s focus on dissent is, according to her, nothing new within Islam, but in fact is rooted in Islam’s very history. This tradition of free thinking she calls ‘itjihad’.

In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived. Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university. So much of what we consider ‘western’ pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar, mocha coffee, even the ultra-Spanish expression "Ole!" (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, "Allah"). What happened to ijtihad? toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam.

As any student of history knows, Irshad Manji is downplaying the contribution of Islam to the West. Without Islam it is completely possible that Western civilization may have known no philosophy or science whatsoever, at least until hundreds of years after they were being rediscovered by medieval monastics. And this golden age of free thought within Islam is itself being prepared today for a big-time revival. Irshad Manji is hardly Nixon going to China here, since she is a gay woman who lives in the West, not an imam who lives in Saudi Arabia. But the fact is that even the extraordinary figure of Irshad Manji is not alone in her willingness to speak up against Islam’s unacceptable practices against women. The practice of ‘itjihad’, long rooted in Islamic thought and tradition, is alive and well among many Muslim women today. Many women of Islam are now practicing a revitalized faith, a faith which does not abandon Islam, but shakes its foundations. Such women, not the apologists of the U.N., are the driving force behind a new generation of young Muslims who may in the end save Islam itself.
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3/02/2005

21:44
Senate Judiciary Committee: “Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, who some Republicans had suggested might be willing to vote with them for certain nominees, wrote Mr. Bush asking him to withdraw all of the candidates Democrats blocked in the Senate during the president's first term”. There goes one of Specter’s two votes. Looks like he’s inching closer to having to drop those nukes he talked about. “[A] dramatic parliamentary duel over long-standing Senate practice” is now inevitable. Like I said before, don’t waste your breath with bluff or threat. Just drop ‘em.
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20:54
Iran:“Iran won't allow United Nations inspectors to revisit a military base where U.S. officials suspect it might have tested high-explosive components for a nuclear weapon”. I wonder why Iran feels so empowered, given the intense scrutiny given to this issue by the U.N.?

In January, after months of public and private pressure, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were allowed to visit the Parchin military complex. Diplomats with knowledge of the agency's work say the inspectors found no evidence of nuclear-weapons work there but that the inspectors had been given only limited access to the vast site and would need a return visit to resolve their doubts. In a verbal report to the IAEA board yesterday in Vienna, Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt quoted Iran as saying it had ‘fulfilled’ the agency's expectation and ‘thus there is no justification for any additional visit’. Iran says Parchin is a conventional military base and thus not subject to IAEA monitoring and that the January visit was at its sufferance. It also says it has no nuclear-weapons ambitions and that its nuclear program is solely for producing energy.

Yes, the U.N. has obviously gotten the mullahs shaking in their boots, just like they did with Saddam. Don’t want your nuclear program reviewed by the IAEA? Move it to a conventional military base, then make that sector off-limits. The IAEA will say they quite understand and thank you kindly. The problem now is that the U.S. looks like it's thinking about emulating the U.N.: “President Bush is weighing European appeals that the U.S. provide some economic incentives to Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, a step he has been reluctant to take for fear of rewarding Tehran for questionable behavior”.

I cannot understand this approach. Isn’t it obvious that if we offer a carrot before the stick the mullahs will just take that as yet another sign of weakness? Why should we hesitate now, when even the New York Times has admitted that the U.S. is at the crest of a foreign policy wave:

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in power.

Even the New York Times finally has its finger on the pulse of what is going on. Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and now, Egypt : “The surprise decision by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to propose a constitutional amendment, opening up the process of electing the president by direct competitive balloting, may well be a giant step for democracy in Egypt and the Arab World”. It is no longer inconceivable that Syria itself may be next.

Sure, these are still baby steps, fraught with problems. But they are nevertheless steps forward. And we may be approaching a tipping point. The enemy knows this, and knows that the democratic backlash is in danger of sweeping away jihad along with the autocratic regimes. Why else is Zarqawi being told to stop attacking Iraqis and start attacking Americans? “In his gory way, Zarqawi is becoming a more immediate threat to al Qaeda than America. By killing so many Muslims, Zarqawi has destroyed the folk-hero image of Islamist terrorists, reducing them to nothing but renegade murderers”. The tide is turning. “It's hard not to feel giddy, watching the dominoes fall”. So why, now, are we being wobbly on Iran?
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3/01/2005

06:35
Western Culture: I am getting a little bored with the American Spectator's shrill crusade against Million Dollar Baby. The Spectator's blockheadedness, which seeks to identify a 'liberal agenda' within films, is the equivalent in politics, not of McCarthyism, but of the laughable phallus-hunt and equivalent practices that characterized Freudian criticism. Yes, I hate the political opinions of Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Clint Eastwood. But I love Mystic River and Thelma and Louise and I have no doubt that I am going to love Million Dollar Baby, if it is a good film, just as Salieri hated Mozart but loved his music. It is on the definition of the word 'good' where I disagree with the Spectator.

If a film is a work of art, it has no 'message' in the sense meant by the Spectator. Romeo and Juliet has a significance. It does not have a 'message'. For that matter, neither does Oliver Stone's 'Nixon'. The subject of a work of art is a protagonist, not a policy. This is why propaganda cannot be art. For conservatives to believe that Hollywood really does churn out 'propaganda' is to be as disingenuous with respect to the word 'propaganda' as it is for liberals to use the words 'nazi' and 'Hitler'. It is as dumb for conservatives to feel threatened by Hollywood's politics as it is juvenile for liberals to believe that we're one step away from all being herded into anonymous railway cars.

Nevertheless, the Spectator states: "A.O. Scott of the New York Times, who called it 'the best movie released by a major Hollywood studio this year', went on to praise it in particular as 'a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove'. Nothing to prove! It has nothing but something to prove [...][sic]". What, then does the movie 'prove'? What, really, is up the Spectator's ass? The intent of the movie

of course, [is] to make a political point. [...] As is usual in the movies these days, the presence of a Catholic priest is a sure tip-off to its political message. And if, in this movie, Father Horvak (Brian O'Byrne) is not quite the lurid caricature that we find again and again in movies from El Crimen del Padre Amaro to The Magdalene Sisters to Bad Education, he is no less political in his purpose. The movie puts him there with his fussy, humorless, faintly ridiculous ways, to be the voice of traditional morality, advising Eastwood's fight trainer that if he grants his now crippled protagonist's wish to end her life he will be lost forever. Naturally the priest fails to recognize that, to this guy, that is an irresistible invitation. Like many another anti-clerical before him, Eastwood wears the assurance of his eternal damnation as a badge of honor.

What must be understood is that this is a literary, not political criticism. The film's characters may indeed be cliches and/or unbelievable, but it is this, not the film's 'message', that would make it a bad movie or not. Nevertheless, the Spectator goes on to exclaim that the 'message' of Million Dollar Baby is that euthanasia is permissible. But then is the 'message' of Romeo and Juliet that suicide is permissible? The central mistake the Spectator makes is further shown by its response to this question: if Million Dollar Baby 'promotes' euthanasia, does Romeo and Juliet likewise 'promote' suicide?

The fact that there is a suicide in a work of literature no more makes it pro-suicide than the fact that there is a murder makes it pro-murder. All depends on context, and in learning to read complex texts we all must learn to tell from the context which way the author is pointing us. You'd have to be a very poor reader indeed to read Romeo and Juliet as promoting suicide. On the contrary, it treats Romeo's suicide as yet another of his rash and foolish acts and Juliet's as, in spite of its pathos, equally regrettable. Indeed, the suicides are what makes the play a tragedy [...] They leave us with a sense of devastating loss and waste -- not with the feeling Eastwood intends to convey, that the characters have behaved admirably.

This is perhaps the most juvenile piece of literary criticism I have ever read. If Romeo and Juliet had not 'behaved admirably', how could the author have created a 'sense of devastating loss and waste'? Aren't they related? Romeo's tragic flaw is the very thing that makes him admirable. In their very act of suicide, don't Romeo and Juliet follow - rashly - that very ideal of love that makes them and their tragedy extraordinary? Why else would we feel any more pathos for Hamlet, than for, say, Laertes, both of whom die for pretty much the same reasons? Or do we feel a sense of 'waste' because Romeo and Juliet are merely a pair of average teens who by the end of the play are just shit out of luck? In that case why doesn't a car wreck with casualties have the same aesthetic value as a piece of art?

I haven't seen Million Dollar Baby but it's a safe bet that the tragic flaw of Clint Eastwood's character is the very one described by the Spectator - his 'admirable' willingness to reject convention that drove him to train a female is the same tragic flaw that drives him into the 'regrettable' act of killing her. Just guessing.

But The Spectator seems to argue more generally that the depiction of suffering that informs Hollywood is suspect: "The only suffering that makes sense to Hollywood is suffering for a worldly dream (taking blows to the head for boxing fame, etc). But suffering for otherworldly reasons as an act of obedience to God? Unthinkable". Firstly, uh, hello, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi? Secondly, is the Spectator really saying that the only permissible suffering within literature is the latter kind? Perhaps at this point the Spectator begins to descend not into McCarthyism, but into the same befuddlement that plagues the elder Plato's Laws, which exiles wholesale all artists from the philosopher's utopia. Surely the fact that art depicts worldly suffering more often than spiritual suffering is an indication, not that spirituality is in decline, but that the realm of art has always been concerned more with a depiction of how all suffering - worldly and spiritual - occurs on the worldly, not spiritual level? Otherwise we are left with the Spectator's conflated conclusion that the suffering of Romeo and Juliet and all the tragic heroes of literature, is not 'spiritual', only 'worldly', which is bunk.

Perhaps the Spectator seeks to point out that there just is a dearth of films about Jesus that get awards. Gandhi, of course, was a film about a Hindu. But it's also disingenuous for the Spectator to complain that Jesus has never been big at the Oscars when in fact Christians themselves have been the most vocal objectors to films about Jesus:

When Nicholas Ray's "King of Kings" came out in 1961, the Catholic Legion of Decency issued a warning against it. In the '70s, Franco Zeffirelli, who was making the six-hour television epic "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977), said he wanted to portray Jesus as an "ordinary man - gentle, fragile, simple." That did it. A letter-writing campaign, initiated by Bob Jones III of Bob Jones University, resulted in General Motors' dropping its sponsorship of the film - which went on to win a rare stamp of approval from Pope Paul VI. Later, many theaters refused to show Martin Scorcese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), and picket lines went up at those that did. When protesters were interviewed, they usually said the same thing: They hadn't seen the film but knew it was no good. Film critics should only be so psychic.

It is disingenuous for the Spectator to complain about The Passion's exclusion from the Oscars just because this is, finally, a film about Jesus that the Spectator happens to like. What, The Passion is, finally, the filmic Authorized Version of Jesus' final 24 hours? Who says? I know a few protestants who might disagree. The thing is, by working on an iconic as opposed to narrative level, The Passion in fact wasn't that good of a film. Again, this is a literary criticism, just as the Spectator's criticism of Million Dollar Baby is, despite its best efforts to prove otherwise.

Quite apart from The Passion's juvenile elements (the Earthquake, Caiaphas weeping regretfully in the wrecked temple, the Devil screaming in defeat, the dumb final Resurrection scene) the film's central problem was that it reduced the meaning of the protagonist's mission on Earth from the level of doctrine to the level of icon. This results in a problem, because although doing this would work if film was equivalent to stained glass, I submit that film is not an iconic, but a narrative, medium. Name one surreal, iconic, plotless or non-narrative film that is a true work of art, and I'll dispute its status with you. And Aristotle demonstrated that every narrative needs a beginning, middle and end. The Passion just has an end. Nothing develops. The tension of the film can be neither dissipated nor purged, because it was never created in the first place. The film succeeds, in other words, in conveying that Something Very Serious has been going on, which will result in the film's actions. But it does not convey what that thing is. What is the motivation of Judas, Caiaphas, Mary Magdalene? Why are they doing what they do? Ironically the only character who does have a (non-scriptural) bit of background inserted is Pilate, who explains to his wife that if he doesn't quell the next rebellion, Caeser will tell him to kill himself. As a result Pilate is the only real character in the film. For Jesus, we only get scattered flashbacks. He's a symbol with no significance, not because of any dearth of 'message' but of theme. This may be an honest failing. The film sets out ostensibly to portray the protagonist's last day on Earth. But as a consequence the film limits itself to Jesus' scriptural acts and pronouncements within that time period, which are the tip of a very, very big iceberg. And you can't understand the whole iceberg by just looking at the tip. It's as if Mel Gibson made a film of Hamlet which consisted only of the final scene. There's no foundation. As a result, the character of Jesus in The Passion is as bloodless as the icon of Jesus in The Passion is bloody. The film is scattered, like a patchwork of fragments held together with no thread, let alone any transcendent or motivating narrative. Mel Gibson's failure, in other words, was to create various scenes about bloodletting rather than a single work about sacrifice. And this is a failure, again, not of 'message', but of theme.

I think Christ said that his kingdom was not of this world. Likewise, only works of art that are aesthetically out of this world deserve our admiration. And conservatives who cannot distinguish between literary and political criticism likewise fuel the fire of those liberals who criticize those conservatives who may appear to be, to put it delicately, more passionate than eloquent. I guess the more shrill the message the more likely you are to sell your website, whether you would like your state to be red or blue. There are many, many conservative sources out there which do not make this mistake. I think from now on I will read those instead of the Spectator.
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